Metal-Organic Cuboctahedra for Synthetic Ion Channels with Multiple Conductance States

Emulation of biological ion channels by synthetic molecules is not only a challenge for chemists in designing highly complex (supra) molecules but also key to developing a new tool for exploring subcellular electrochemical activity. Despite efforts to create a single pore in a lipid bilayer by synthetic channels, a general synthetic strategy for realizing more complex two-pore channels has yet to be proposed. Here, we demonstrate two distinct ion conductance states by embedding a singlemetal-organic porous molecule with the geometry of an Archimedean cuboctahedron into an artificially reconstructed lipid bilayer membrane in which triangular and square apertures in the cuboctahedron work independently as ion-transporting pathways. By changing the aliphatic chain length introduced on the periphery of the cuboctahedron, we found that the rotational dynamics of the cuboctahedron regulate the open pore time of each conductance state through distinct apertures and the switching between them.